In the aftermath of the London bombing my respect for mayor Ken Livingstone soared. Today, it returned to earth with a bump. In an interview with Radio 4, Ken blamed Western policy in the Middle East for the London bombing, trotting out the same, tired old arguments over oil, Israel, and US involvement in Afghanistan.

If Ken took the time to find out a little more on the subject maybe he would pause first before making statements like this:

And I think the particular problem we have at the moment is that in the 1980s… the Americans recruited and trained Osama Bin Laden, taught him how to kill, to make bombs, and set him off to kill the Russians and drive them out of Afghanistan.

From my reading of Peter Bergen’s Holy War, Inc, so far (and I have yet to finish it so things could change…but I doubt it), the Americans had practically nothing to do with OBL in Afghanistan. In fact, OBL was quite happily building up his own little band of merry men, paid for out of his own pocket, completely separate from any US involvement.

Yes, the Americans poured money into Afghanistan via Pakistan. And most of it went to some of the world’s worst people, like Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. But not to Osama. So where does Ken get his facts from? His own press statements perhaps?

But Ken’s malfeasance doesn’t stop there. Oh no. When he shines his little light on Israel in particular, he produces this gem:

“Under foreign occupation and denied the right to vote, denied the right to run your own affairs, often denied the right to work for three generations, I suspect that if it had happened here in England, we would have produced a lot of suicide bombers ourselves.”

Well, it, didn’t happen here in England. But we still managed to produce three suicide bombers. What does that tell you about these people’s ideology?